Processing raw, disorganized data and presenting it in a relevant context is familiar to service providers. But turning the information into valuable insights that can be shared across the entire company requires a new approach.

1. Using big data to create actionable
information for service providers
INSIGHTS
IN MOTION

2. 2 ERICSSON GET THE WHOLE PICTURE ON BIG DATA
adopt a whole
picture approach
Processing raw, disorganized data and presenting it
in a relevant context is a task that is familiar to service
providers. But turning the information into valuable
insights that can be shared across the entire company
requires a new approach to collecting customer and
operations intelligence. In order to compete in an
increasingly mobile world, service providers are
required to change the way they deliver value to
their customers and create value for their business.
Hence they need to continuously transform their
networks, IT and business supporting functions.
Many organizations have converted data into intelligence
for particular functions, without connecting the insights
across the organization. More recently, their objectives
have expanded. They are now analyzing large amounts
of data, correlating the information with additional
data from other sources, and acting upon
this intelligence in real time.
Keys to delivering value
Proven expertise is required in order to deliver
valuable insights across the entire organization,
combined with deep understanding of the insight
in motion process. Ericsson has simplified
this process into three key elements:
> Quality-of-Insights (QOI): being able to determine
which information is relevant and where to get the data
in order to create reliable insights. Understanding how
networks operate, as well as how they are performing
at all times, is as essential as knowing what customers
prefer and expect. This is not something that is easily
identified, and simply guessing what data matters
and where to get the information jeopardizes the
efficiency of the entire process. Security is also a
critical component of QOI, because if information
can be easily altered or corrupted, then it cannot
be used for generating meaningful insights.
Service providers are required
to change the way they deliver
value to their customers
Converting data into insight
Ericsson’s Mobility Report shows
that monthly smartphone traffic will reach
12 ExaBytes in 2019, a ten-fold increase from 2013.
And that’s just smartphone traffic. In fact, data
traffic is increasingly travelling between mobile
sources, significantly complicating the challenge
of collecting and correlating all that data.
But delivering intelligence in real time is not
sufficient. Service providers need to make sure
they are analyzing the right data, converting this
intelligence into customer insights quickly, and
leveraging them across the whole organization
in order to create value for the business. This
process is what we call insights in motion.
Traditionally, service providers generate
actionable insights by focusing on one of
three different perspectives – network, IT and
business. Understanding all three areas, as well
as the relationships between them, is essential
to helping organizations operate efficiently.
Adopting this approach is a necessary step in
transforming service providers’ business.
> Time-to-Insights (TTI): making sure the data
is immediately available to generate actionable
intelligence. Service providers should then expose that
intelligence across the organization to all functional
groups in order to create insights that they can
leverage. This is essential for a high-performance
operator. Systems must be agile and efficient, as well
as able to manage large amounts of data in motion,
and correlate that information with historic data in
order to develop insights on every individual user.
> Return-on-Insights (ROI): ensuring that the insights
created will drive business advantages across
the organization. This will improve operational
efficiency, build value, strengthen the customer
experience, increase loyalty, reduce churn, and
enable continued growth. Service providers
have many competing business objectives, and
all of them can be addressed by improving the
company’s ability to generate actionable insights.

3. ERICSSON GET THE WHOLE PICTURE ON BIG DATA 3
Highlight
opportunities
Improve overall service quality
Consider the case of an operator that is struggling
to manage the growth in mobile data consumption,
while also trying to limit expenditures without
sacrificing customer experience. Using analysis
of real-time network data on coverage conditions,
network equipment performance, session errors and
events handling, equipment fail rates can be identified.
Any cell issues can also be correlated and fixed,
and the operator can develop a better view of any
coverage overlap.
The collected insights are used to pinpoint opportunities
for optimization and rapid implementation of capacity
expansions. This enables optimal technology utilization
and improved network reliability, thereby allowing
service providers to efficiently handle traffic growth.
Although predicting future performance based
on current performance – a method known as
nowcasting – improves overall service quality, it is
not sufficient to handle the issues of individual users.
Collecting real-time information will help identify
devices that are generally underperforming, and
cross-checking the information with traffic data
sessions explains what is happening on an individual
event level for a particular service for a subscriber.
Furthermore, correlating these insights with data
from Customer Relationship Management (CRM),
apps and social networks can provide the customer
with a more relevant experience when interacting
with the operator. As well as improving customer
experience, this proactive handling of issues improves
the efficiency and effectiveness of customer care.
Advantages for the entire organization
At Ericsson, we are able to connect raw, real-time
data from operators’ networks and IT. In combination
with information from various external sources,
we can use the whole picture to build business
advantages across their entire organization.
Ericsson manages networks that serve more than
1 billion subscribers worldwide, and 40 percent of the
world’s mobile traffic runs through our networks. This
gives us expertise and knowledge about how networks
operate, what data is being generated, and how it can
be used to support enterprises in achieving their goals.
There are more than 900 Ericsson OSS systems in
operation around the world and more than 2 billion
subscriptions served by our BSS solutions. This provides
us with deeper understanding of the behavior of mobile
networks, devices, apps and users, allowing us to
deliver valuable insights to our customers every day.
TIME-TO-INSIGHTS
QUALITY-OF-INSIGHTS
RETURN-ON-INSIGHTS
BUSINESS
NETWORKIT

4. EAB-14:038368
© Ericsson AB 2014
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